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Juan Cole | "The Horror, the Horror": An Epitaph for Trump's Nazi Presidency
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "In Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, the imperial commercial agent Kurtz, who has committed horrible atrocities against Black Congolese for the monetary gain of white Europeans, whispers his dying words to riverboat captain Charles Marlow, 'The horror, the horror.' When Marlow arrived at Kurtz's camp in the jungle, he had found heads on stakes."
As we bid farewell to Donald John Trump, it is appropriate that all 330 million Americans whisper those words around noon on Wednesday. “The horror, the horror.” He has plunged us into our own jungle of searing hatred, as we ride the great python-like river of racial discrimination, with the heads of justice and the rule of law atop the pikes of militia anarchy.
For the sake of gaining political and economic power, for both of which he had been hungry his entire life, Trump embraced white supremacy. American presidents may be standard-bearers of their parties, but the two parties only comprise roughly a third of voters each. A successful presidential run involves adding groups to the party, in a temporary coalition. Reagan brought in some white workers, including the Teamsters. George W. Bush was supported by the suburban soccer moms.
Trump added to the Republican base the ten percent of Americans who say that they support the alt-Right. How euphemistic that term is becomes obvious when we consider that fully 9% of Americans say that it is acceptable to hold Neo-Nazi views. We may conclude that 1% of the alt-Right draws the line at actual Nazism. Some Republicans had tacitly accepted the backing of white supremacists for some time, but after the change in public consciousness brought about by the Civil Rights movement of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., they avoided saying so publicly, using innuendo and dog whistles.
Trump let the cat out of the bag. He did not simply normalize the white supremacists and Nazis as part of the Republican coalition, however. He added to their power, and helped get them elected to Congress, and helped their supporters dominate the primaries. Where before, the Nazis were poor cousins of the party, now they would enjoy high positions in the government bureaucracy and in the national legislature.
Indeed, if the Senate Republicans do not vote to impeach Trump and prohibit him from politics, they will find themselves gradually unseated by the Nazis, who are taking over the party.
He also paid homage to the vigorous militia movements among the white supremacists. I said in 2017 when he was inaugurated that he might make them the shock troops of das Volk, the imagined (white) People Trump claimed to represent.
I was right.
On the odious Trump’s last full day in office, it is worth recalling how it all began, at his inauguration four years ago, and what I said then:
Translating Trump’s inaugural Speech from the original German
Donald Trump’s inaugural speech, like the candidate himself, was a chain of falsehoods, saber-rattling and scary Neofascist uber-nationalism. But it could be difficult to follow because so much of it seemed stolen from the mass politics of the 1930s in central and southern Europe. So here is a plain English translation of some key passages.
Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.
You may be confused, as an English speaker. Trump, a billionaire real estate developer and serial grifter who founded a phony university that defrauded thousands, has appointed a cabinet of billionaires and multi-millionaires, the wealthiest and most elite cabinet in American history, which even includes the CEO of petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil.
How, you might ask, can he represent this coup by the super-rich as ‘giving’ power ‘back to’ ‘the people’? The people wouldn’t even be allowed on the grounds of the gated communities where Trump’s officials live.
The confusion arises from thinking in English instead of 1930s German. “Das Volk” or the people was a mystical conception for the German far right. It comprised the German people as an organic whole, uniting great landlord and lowly peasant. The great German corporations, too, were said to be expressions of “the people” (Hence the German automobile company Volkswagen, now led by perfectly nice people but not so much in the 1930s). The phrase comes into focus if you understand “the people” as “white Protestants and some lately admitted ethnic Catholics” who are united across social class (though of course led by their billionaire betters), and who stand in contrast to the cosmopolitans, the mixed-race people, infiltrating minorities, the socialists and others bent on diluting “the people” and subverting its prosperity and power by kowtowing to foreigners.
Trump also used the typical 1930s diction of the traitor within:
“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”
The traitors to das Volk, the people, are the intellectuals and persons with an international outlook, and socialists secretly working for an international cabal, and the peacemakers and diplomats– who were seen as weak and feckless. There are also religious and ethnic groups who polluted the integrity of the bodily fluids of the White body politic; for Trump these especially include Mexican-Americans and Muslims, though some people around him think that high-placed liberal Democratic Jews are manipulating the Fed against American interests. Obama was one of these infiltrators, the faux American born in Kenya who is secretly a Muslim or maybe a Muslim-Communist. These treasonous bureaucrats and artists and thinkers and soft businessmen ultimately make a pretty penny and gain social prestige and power by betraying the helpless Volk and reducing them to weakness and poverty. They may even be in the pay of foreign Powers.
The Volk are helpless before these traitors unless the natural leaders within the White community take charge and reestablish the mystical union between working class whites and corporate whites. The policy? Economic protectionism and monopoly capital inside one country. The enemy? International competitors like Chinese firms.
“But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”
The United States has 5% of the world’s population. But its gross domestic product (GDP), at $18.5 trillion, is 22.5% of the GDP of the entire world in nominal terms! The US economy is the largest in the world and is substantially larger than that of its nearest competitor, China (at $11.5 trillion), which, however, has about 4 times as many people as the United States. That is, on a per person basis, Chinese are positively poverty-stricken compared to Americans. Trump has taken the most flourishing economy in the world, which admittedly has large internal inequalities, and made it an economic graveyard by his gloomy rhetoric. (He in fact intends to increase the inequalities). Only by proclaiming a crisis and obscuring the US success story and US prosperity can he hope to convince das Volk that they need a great leader to restore them to their previous glory. Note that abandoned factories are highlighted here, mostly caused by mechanization and robotification of labor so that the big corporations don’t need as many American workers. The actual blight on the landscape of oil spills and mercury dumps and coal-fired plants– the pollution caused by corporate malfeasance– is not mentioned, since, of course, the corporations are The People.
Crime, too, has dramatically fallen in the United States in the past 20 years, but Trump wants people to believe the opposite. Again, only if there is a crisis of brown and black crime will das Volk be willing to surrender their rights to the Great White Trump.
By the way, those gangs he alleges are laying waste to our cities? He isn’t talking about skinheads or white supremacists or neo-Nazis. They, of course, are an essential part of das Volk, perhaps even the shock troops of The People.
Likewise, US education is not the vast wasteland Trump depicts. The US ranks in the middle of industrialized countries on math and reading. But much of the shortfall is because of the lack of funding for schools in poor districts (since local schools are funded by local taxes, the school system reflects America’s vast class and racial inequalities). Trump’s idea of fixing these schools is not to pump Federal money into the poorer districts to even the playing field but to privatize the school system so that the poor can’t even afford schooling at all. That is the kind of thing Betsy DeVoss, who wants to use the government to indoctrinate children into extremist forms of Christianity, promotes.
I could go on analyzing Trump’s lies and his Neofascist code words. But you get the picture. He and his billionaire cabinet are the natural leaders of the white Volk of Amerika, so much so that they are The People. Unlike the racialists of the 1930s, he will allow some individuals from the minorities along for the ride if they are ideologically aligned with the real Americans. He is going to kick out the cosmopolitan, half-breed traitors in the name of America First (not being a historian of the United States, it was only about a decade ago that I discovered how ugly this seemingly admirable phrase is). And he is going to run down all of America’s beauty and achievements and causes for pride so as to pull the wool over the eyes of The People and get them to back him in a new, authoritarian coup government for the United States– one where de facto most of the Bill of Rights are abolished except for the Second Amendment.
Pipeline under construction in Alberta, Canada. (photo: Flickr)
Keystone XL Pipeline Halted as Biden Revokes Permit
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
Gillies writes: "Construction on the long disputed Keystone XL oil pipeline halted Wednesday as incoming U.S. president Joe Biden revoked its permit on his first day in office."
The 1,700-mile (2,735-kilometer) pipeline was planned to carry roughly 800,000 barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“The Permit is hereby revoked,” Biden’s executive order says. “Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my Administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”
Keystone XL President Richard Prior said over 1,000 jobs, the majority unionized, will be eliminated in the coming weeks. “We will begin a safe and orderly shut-down of construction,” he said.
First proposed in 2008, the pipeline has become emblematic of the tensions between economic development and curbing the fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and has been a strong supporter.
The premier of the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta called Biden’s decision an “insult” and said the federal Canadian government should impose trade sanctions if it is not reversed. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a conciliatory tone.
“We are disappointed but acknowledge the President’s decision to fulfil his election campaign promise on Keystone XL,” Trudeau said in a statement.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will call Trudeau on Friday, the first call with a foreign leader after Biden took the oath of office. Psaki said the pipeline will be discussed.
Trudeau raised Keystone XL as a top priority when he spoke with Biden in a phone call in November. The project is meant to expand critical oil exports for Canada, which has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and is America’s number one source of foreign oil.
Trudeau and Biden are politically aligned and there are expectations for a return to normal relations after four years of Trump, but the pipeline is an early irritant as Biden has long said he would cancel it.
“Despite President Biden’s decision on the project, we would like to welcome other executive orders made today, including the decisions to rejoin the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, to place a temporary moratorium on all oil and natural gas leasing activities in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to reverse the travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries,” Trudeau said in his statement.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said Biden’s decision is a gut punch for his province, which has a stake in the project.
“It is a insult directed at the United States most important ally and trading partner on day one of a new administration,” Kenney said.
“The leader of our closest ally retroactively vetoed approval for a pipeline that exists and which is co-owned by Canadian government, directly attacking by far the largest part of the Canada U.S. trade relationship, which is our energy industry and exports.”
Critics of the Alberta oil sands say the growing operations increase greenhouse gas emissions and threaten Alberta’s rivers and forests.
But Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said Biden’s decision is not grounded in science and will put thousands of Americans out of work,
“The pipeline — the most studied infrastructure project in American history — is already under construction and has cleared countless legal and environmental hurdles,” Durbin said in a statement. “Halting construction will also impede the safe and efficient transport of oil, and unfairly single out production from one of our closest and most important allies.”
Environmental groups applauded Biden’s move.
“Killing the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all is a clear indication that climate action is a priority for the White House,” said Dale Marshall, national climate program manager for Canada’s Environmental Defence.
Health care worker. (photo: AP)
'Worse Than We Imagined': Team Trump Left Biden a COVID Nightmare
Erin Banco, Scott Bixby, Sam Brodey, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "Twelve minutes before noon on Wednesday, President Joe Biden was sworn into office as the nation's 46th president. Seven hours later, the United States reported more than 4,409 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, according to data collected by the COVID-19 Tracking Project."
The systems to manufacture, distribute, and track vaccine doses set up by the Trump administration are even more broken than Biden’s COVID team feared.
The Biden administration came into power with purpose and an extensive agenda to combat the coronavirus pandemic, but purpose and planning only gets you so far—particularly when the president’s team is only just now getting a clear picture of how badly the previous administration had managed the crisis.
“What we’re inheriting from the Trump administration is so much worse than we could have imagined,” Jeff Zients, the Biden administration’s COVID-19 czar, said in a call with reporters Wednesday. “We don't have the visibility that we would hope to have into supply and allocations.”
“I think we have to level-set expectations,” added Tom Frieden, the former director for the Centers for Disease Control in the Obama administration. “There are lots of things that an incoming administration can do on Day One, including speaking honestly about the pandemic.”
The new administration is already behind, in part because the Trump administration was unprecedentedly hostile during the transition. The question now, however, is how Biden can get a handle on a raging pandemic when his team is already so far behind.
The task at hand is enormous. More than 400,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. Every state, territory and the District of Columbia is in a state of emergency. The number of people infected with the virus who are now hospitalized is more than double the number reached during the spring and summer peaks.
It’s not just the spread of the virus that the Biden team needs to tackle. Officials will also have to confront the disinformation and misinformation about the virus that has permeated all four corners of the country—where people still believe the virus is a hoax and that public health guidelines are too great of an imposition on their personal freedom to follow. But it’s unclear what power of persuasion the Biden administration will hold and if it will be enough to convince people to take the virus more seriously.
“At least we won’t have a president that’s actively fighting those rules on national television,” one official working with the new Biden COVID-19 team said.
More urgently, Biden and his team will have to handle the growing frustration among states over the lack of a comprehensive vaccine-distribution program that enables them to inoculate their residents quickly. They will have to find a way to get states more vaccines needed to meet Americans’ growing demand for the shot.
Biden’s COVID-19 team says the president will use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure that health-care facilities have what they need for personal protective equipment and to continue to scale testing across the country. Officials say Biden will also use the act and “other legal authorities” for “raw materials to ensure that bottlenecks do not slow down [vaccine] production,” Zients said, specifically mentioned the production of syringes as critical to success.
It’s still unclear exactly when the president will invoke the DPA, and if the administration will lean on the legal authority for the production of supplies other than vaccine syringes.
“Making vaccines is not simple, and you can't cut any corners,” Frieden said. “We'll see if there's anything more that can be done.”
Biden enters office as states across the country are grappling with massive vaccine shortages. Hospitals and pharmacies have begun to run out, forcing them to cancel first and second dose appointments. Officials in states such as California, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New York, New Jersey, and Arizona this week called on the federal government to not only help facilitate the shipment of additional vaccines but to clearly communicate how many doses they should expect to receive in the coming days. They’ve received no answers, according to six state health officials, all of whom requested to remain anonymous to speak more freely about the issue.
Those officials said the Biden team has for weeks reached out to states to assuage their concerns about the lack of a cohesive and functioning vaccination distribution system. The Biden message to frustrated governors was simple: help is on the way. But as White House officials begin to strategize on how best to remedy the situation they are finding that the foundation on which the Trump administration built its vaccine distribution program is more flawed than previously understood, according to two individuals involved with vaccine planning. From the accounting to the way vaccines are allocated and scheduled for delivery—the system doesn’t allow for the quick movement of vaccines off the manufacturing line to state vaccine distribution points, those officials said.
The former Trump administration built out the vaccine distribution process within the confines of Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to fast-track a novel COVID-19 vaccine. In the first few months of its existence, Operation Warp Speed focused on development—creating the country’s first effective mRNA vaccine and supporting companies’ clinical trials. The distribution strategizing came later. Developed by the military, the plan was to have the federal government, specifically the military officials within Operation Warp Speed, lead the logistics part of the vaccine delivery. The military would not actually touch the vaccine but would instead coordinate the effort from the Pentagon.
Part of that coordination required states using the Pentagon’s Tiberius system—a platform that allows local officials to input their orders and see when they will be receiving their next doses. States only had a few weeks to try out the Tiberius platform before the vaccine rollout began in December, officials said, and they were provided false projections on how many doses they would be receiving once the Pfizer vaccine became available.
Two state health officials who spoke to The Daily Beast said they believe the Tiberius system is still not accurately updating and is miscounting either how many doses the companies have manufactured or how many have been allocated by the federal government. Those officials said they have yet to receive responses from federal officials about whether their most recent orders for Pfizer and Moderna jabs have been filled.
Part of the confusion among states is how the newest Trump administration federal guidelines on vaccine distribution have impacted the manufacturing process. The Department of Health and Human Services, along with the Centers for Disease Control, recently released a new set of recommendations that allow states to hand out the vaccine more freely—to widen the population of who can receive the shot in the first wave. The federal government also said it would start to release doses it had originally held in reserve for second-shot dosing.
The recommendations almost worked too well—they ramped up demand significantly. Now, states say they don’t have enough doses.
“There were more than 12 million hits to a map of providers we posted yesterday so it is clear that many Pennsylvanians are eager to get the COVID-19 vaccine,” a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. “Unfortunately, we do not have enough vaccine for everyone who wants it right now.”
The policy centerpiece of Biden’s attempt to turn the tide on the pandemic—and the devastating economic consequences it has also wrought—is a $1.9 trillion relief package he rolled out a week ago. It calls not only for expanded unemployment help, small business aid, and $1,400 direct checks, but $350 billion in relief aid to state and local governments to boost testing and vaccine rollout, and $20 billion and $50 billion for separate vaccine and testing initiatives, respectively.
But that proposal faces an uncertain environment on Capitol Hill—particularly the Senate, where Democrats now hold the tie-breaking vote and where an impeachment trial of Trump is expected to eat up at least a week of the upcoming legislative calendar. The president’s allies fear that the trial, combined with Biden’s urgent push to confirm members of the cabinet who will help enact his efforts to control the virus, could push passage of his trillion-dollar “rescue plan“ into late spring.
Democratic senators, who largely agree with Biden’s assessment that their $900 billion December relief bill was merely a “down payment” for a more expansive follow-up, are anxious to see the Senate leap into action at a pivotal moment in the country’s struggle to control the virus.
“It’s the top priority,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). “My gut tells me we will do all we can to find a bipartisan accord on it. There are many pieces of the proposed package I think that will generate significant Republican support.”
Biden’s transition has actively reached out to lawmakers in both parties to sell them on their plan; Kaine told The Daily Beast that the process will “really accelerate” now that Biden has been sworn in.
With GOP support a must to reach the 60-vote threshold—otherwise, the legislation will be stripped down only to issues relating to government spending and revenues—the administration is making a point of courting Republicans inclined to support such a proposal. One of them, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), said as she left the inaugural ceremony on Wednesday that she had already gotten the Biden team’s pitch and a chance to directly ask them questions.
“I got a pretty good walkthrough of their COVID proposal yesterday,” Murkowski told The Daily Beast. “It's going to require, I think, a fair amount of debate and consideration. But he's made it clear that this is his initial priority. I don't disagree with that. We've got an economy that's really been hurt, we've got a vaccine that needs to get distributed—we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
A key Democratic vote, centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), told reporters on Wednesday that a bipartisan group of senators—the same cohort that pushed the last round of COVID relief out of a stalemate last year—is slated to meet with White House officials this weekend to talk about the economic side of their plan.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told reporters he hoped that group could produce a counter-proposal, rejecting some parts of Biden’s plan—such as its raising of the federal minimum wage—out of hand.
“There’s space for a deal,” he said.
The willingness of senior Republicans to even contemplate a deal puts wind at Biden’s back—and justifies the prayer, invoked in his inaugural address, that a nation united in common purpose may be able to turn the tide against the virus.
“We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation,” Biden said. “And I promise you this, as the Bible says: ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’ We will get through this together. Together.”
President Biden signs executive orders. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Biden Immediately Begins Rolling Back Trump's Legacy With 17 Executive Orders on Immigration, Climate and COVID
Griffin Connolly, Independent
Connolly writes: "Joe Biden has signed his first slate of executive actions as president, erasing core aspects of Donald Trump's legacy on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration, climate change, and more with the simple stroke of a pen."
Core components of Trump’s legacy come undone with the stroke of a pen
Following an afternoon of ceremonies that included a virtual parade through Washington DC, and the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, the new administration immediately got to work at around 17.15 local time (12.15 GMT), rolling out 15 executive orders and two other action items.
“There's no time to start like today,” the president said from the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
The orders fall into roughly seven categories:
Covid
Mr Biden kicked off his presidency by issuing his much anticipated 100-day mask challenge to the country, pairing it with an executive order to mandate mask wearing in all federal buildings and during interstate travel.
“It's requiring, as I said all along, where I have authority, mandating masks be worn, social distancing be kept on federal property,” Mr Biden explained to reporters in the Oval Office.
The president is also reorganising the way the White House’s institutional approach to the coronavirus pandemic, bringing back an Obama-era position within the administration entitled the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense.
He has pegged transition advisor Jeff Zients to be his “Covid czar”, providing the president with daily briefings about vaccine distribution, testing supplies, the production and availability of personal protective equipment for health workers, and everything else related to the pandemic response.
Mr Biden will have the US formally rejoin the World Health Organisation (WHO), which Mr Trump left after accusing the global organisation’s leadership of being too cozy with China, the source of the virus that has shaken the world economy and health system.
Immigration
On immigration, Mr Biden can pause or undo nearly every policy pursued by Mr Trump over the last four years.
One executive order from Wednesday revokes Mr Trump’s notorious “Muslim Ban”, which has restricted travel to the US from more than a dozen majority-Muslim countries.
Another bolsters the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) programme instituted under Mr Obama that seeks to protect the legal status of so-called “Dreamers”, Americans who were brought to the US as children without documentation but have lived here basically their whole lives. Mr Biden’s executive order calls on Congress to pass a law providing an eight-year path to citizenship for those protected by Daca.
Mr Biden’s administration will be immediately issuing new guidance to officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security, that oversees immigration-related arrests and detention. That executive order will put an explicit stop to the Trump administration’s family separation policy.
Mr Biden will halt construction of Mr Trump’s wall along the US-Mexico border by revoking the national emergency declaration the former president issued in 2018 to siphon money away from other Pentagon projects.
And the new president will extend protections against deportation for thousands of Liberians living in the US, a programme Mr Trump had considered ending at multiple points over the last four years.
Climate
Indicating Mr Biden’s desire to reassert the US’ institutional influence throughout the world, the new administration will also be rejoining the Paris climate accords, a signature achievement of the Obama presidency that sought to reduce global carbon emissions and incentivise the production of green energy.
“We’re going to rejoin the Paris climate accord as of today,” Mr Biden proudly announced at his Oval Office signing ceremony.
A second environment-focused executive order will cut off private companies from drilling for oil and gas on federal lands, which will immediately halt construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The orders will place protections over other federal lands Mr Trump had opened up to various private companies for development.
Income inequality
Two of Mr Biden’s executive orders on Wednesday aim to provide immediate financial relief to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
One orders the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as three federal departments, to extend the moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures through 31 March.
The Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs guarantee more than 11 million mortgages, economic advisers to Mr Biden have pointed out.
The other financial relief-minded executive order extends the freeze placed on student loan debt collection through 30 September of this year.
Ethics and good government
Cognizant of the rampant allegations of corruption and the flagrant Hatch Act violations from top to bottom of Mr Trump’s administration, Mr Biden has signed an executive order mandating everyone who works in his administration to sign an ethics pledge. That pledge includes language honouring the Justice Department’s independence from executive influence.
While Mr Trump actively, publicly lobbied for preferential treatment from the Justice Department for his corrupt 2016 campaign aides Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, Mr Biden is going to great lengths to avoid even the appearance of intervening in various departmental probes, no matter who investigators are looking into.
Race and inequality
Mr Biden inked his name on three executive orders to address racial disparities and inequities within the US government and its operations.
The first reverses a Trump-era order not to count undocumented immigrants living in the United States in the current census.
The US census, conducted every 10 years, is crucial to government operations. It is used to administer federal resources and apportion congressional seats. State legislatures use the census to draw new congressional boundaries if they have more or fewer House seats.
Another executive order calls on the federal bureaucracy to conduct reviews and isolate any racial inequities in how government resources are allocated. It also dissolves the 1776 Commission, Mr Trump’s advisory committee established last September to promote “patriotic education” in US public schools. Critics of the commission have said it whitewashes US history, giving young Americans a warped view of the country’s past.
The last executive order in this tranche extends federal workplace sex discrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans.
More to come…
The Biden administration plans to roll out a total of 53 executive actions over the next 10 days, many of which will directly undo Mr Trump’s policies.
Each day will have a particular theme.
Thursday’s executive orders will focus on addressing the Covid crisis. Friday’s seek to provide economic relief.
The president reiterated that much of what he wants to do for the country will require working with Congress.
“We're gonna need legislation for a lot of the other things we need to do,” he told reporters.
Law enforcement deployed tear gas Wednesday at a protest outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Ore. (photo: Alisha Jucevic/The New York Times)
Scorning Biden, Protesters in Portland and Seattle Called for More Radical Change
Mike Baker and Hallie Golden, The New York Times
Excerpt: "In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, protesters marched through the downtown areas on Wednesday carrying signs opposing the police, immigration authorities and government in general, and some people in each city vandalized buildings symbolizing institutional power."
In Portland, about 200 people clad in black marched to the local Democratic headquarters, where some of them smashed windows and tipped over garbage containers, lighting the contents of one on fire.
Those who took to the streets on Wednesday said they were a mix of anarchists, anti-fascists and racial justice protesters. One of their signs said, “We don’t want Biden — we want revenge” for killings committed by police officers and “fascist massacres.”
President Joe Biden announced his administration would temporarily pause deportations for certain people and halt a Trump-era program for handling asylum seekers at the southern border. (photo: Josue Decavele/Getty)
ALSO SEE: Biden Signs Orders to End 'Muslim Ban', Rejoin WHO
Biden Suspends Deportations, Stops 'Remain in Mexico' Policy
Jaclyn Diaz, Al Jazeera
Diaz writes: "The newly inaugurated Biden administration wasted no time in taking two major steps to dismantle much criticized Trump-era immigration policies in their first day in office."
Youth climate activist. (photo: Ollie Millington/Getty)
Climate Activists Expect a Lot From President Biden and Aren't Afraid to Make That Clear
Cara Korte, CBS News
Korte writes: "Climate activists who have worked with President Joe Biden see his Day 1 executive actions on climate policy as a promising start. But it's just that, a start - they have specific policy goals for his administration."
Mr. Biden signed executive actions Wednesday afternoon to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, direct federal agencies to consider revising vehicle fuel economy and emissions standards, and cancel permits for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — all reversals of policies put in place by President Trump.
Sunrise Movement, a progressive, youth-led group, had a seat at the table during the Biden transition as its co-founder and other allies sat on the Climate Task Force, started as a policy team meant to bridge Senator Bernie Sanders' climate platform with Biden's after Sanders dropped out of the race for president.
Since that time, the Biden team has made multiple concessions, said Sunrise political director Evan Weber. Weber credits the group and other progressives for convincing the administration to create the Office of Domestic Climate Policy, and said it led the push to nominate Representative Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary.
"The climate team as a whole has some of the strongest progressive bona fides across the administration which speaks to the climate movement's growing power," Weber said.
Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, told CBS News that the Biden team is the most pro-climate in history.
"Not that the Obama administration wasn't committed and wasn't pro-environment, [but] I think that this administration is so clearly prioritizing this," she said.
Expectations couldn't be higher for the administration. While there's obvious relief amongst climate activists that Democrats are back in the White House and in control of Congress, none are taking their foot off the pedal.
"We need to see a lot more administrative progress coming over the next days and weeks and every day of this administration," said Sittenfeld.
This week, the League of Conservation Voters published its "Policy Priorities for the Biden-Harris Administration and 117th Congress," a 38-point agenda broken into categories ranging from "Immediate Action" ("Announce commitment to protect 30% of our lands and waters by 2030"), to "First 100 Days" ("Tighten EPA and DOJ enforcement of polluters harming frontline communities"), and beyond ("Establish mandatory requirements to reduce agricultural runoff that causes harmful algal blooms.")
Sunrise sent its own memo to the incoming Biden administration Tuesday evening. Obtained exclusively by CBS News, the "Top Priorities for the Incoming Biden Administration" reads like a fiery plea addressed directly to the president:
"Use your bully pulpit: This is your FDR moment. You have said you want to have an FDR-sized presidency, and much of what was accomplished in that time was done by FDR taking a leading role in corralling the nation into action and taking bold executive action."
The tone is unrelenting. Sunrise's political director said lessons learned from the last Democratic administration contribute to that approach. Many on the progressive left fault President Obama for not doing enough to combat the climate crisis. Weber, a student-activist during the Obama years, recalled going from "excitement and turning into extreme disappointment."
"Young progressives learned that you can't take these promises at their face value and that the work does not end after an election," he said. "We're definitely gonna ask nicely at first and when demands aren't met, we'll change tones and tactics."
Sunrise believes it can apply pressure when it needs to. The group has grown exponentially since it began in 2017. Today there are 477 active chapters across the country with approximately 87,000 members. Weber told CBS News that they've seen more than 100 of those chapters launched since the pandemic began.
They plan to mobilize their hundreds of chapters and lean on specific "targets" in Congress, including Democratic Senate leadership and moderates such as Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. There will be social media pushes, ad buys, and in-person rallies. Thursday will mark a "Day of Action" when Sunrise members plan to rally outside members' local offices — both Democrat and Republican.
"There is an activated, energized, mobilized base of young people that really, really wants change and will reward politicians and defend politicians who are allies ... and will punish and go after people who are standing in the way of progress," said Weber.
Also this week, Organize For Justice, a sister organization of the progressive PAC Justice Democrats, plans to release two short documentaries to usher in the "Decade of the Green New Deal." The short films will highlight workers on the front lines of the climate crisis who call on President Biden and Democrats to enact a policy agenda centered on climate, jobs and justice.
Justice Democrats communications director Waleed Shahid told CBS News that he believes Mr. Biden has the will to enact lasting climate policy and be a "once-in-a-generation American president." However, that optimism, Shahid warned, will not lead to complacency.
"We are not sitting on our hands waiting for action to be taken. We're taking action ourselves. We're not afraid to put public pressure on the administration," he said.
Sunrise's Weber admits that safety precautions because of COVID-19 pose a challenge to their activism, but argues the pandemic has shown the need for sweeping legislation built to address a "massive crisis."
"We need that same kind of an all-in, marshaled effort to address [climate]. It's not something that's happening 30 years down the line. It's happening right now."
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